


A Wick in the Candle of Learning

by elfhawk3



Series: Tumblr prompts [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Vague Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 05:09:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2760839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elfhawk3/pseuds/elfhawk3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Wick in the Candle of Learning

Revas' parents were both city-dwellers, folded into the clan. It is nothing unusual for Clan Lavellan, few can claim anything more than four generations back with it, though most of the others are from different clans, not an alienage. Hahren Atallas says it is because their clan calls to those with a path at their feet and a need for a waypoint to rest. At the time she doesn't understand it, the clan already wanders, what need would one have for further wanderlust?

She spends much of her time questioning newcomers, learning the stories of their prior clans, learning the oddities elves like her parents have kept in the city, and what they have lost. The People do not keep trees like the alienages have. What else have they had to set aside to maintain their freedom? What have they changed? She is constantly at someone's side, badgering them to share all they know, so that all may know.

“If I don't know how others have done it, how may I know what someone else has already found to be wrong to do?” she asks one annoyed hunter, who thought going up a tree would give him a reprise from the tiny child's questions. He was wrong. The tree's branches hold her weight far more easily than his and she perches easily above him, blocking that escape, eyes bright and curious. “If we do not write it down, who is to say the retelling is correct? Why does this say Mythal is a goddess of vengeance? I thought vengeance was Elgar'nan's,” she asks the Keeper, when the elder fetches an aged journal back from her, trying to teach herself to read. Her mother had taught her the letters she had learned from her father, the hahren for the alienage in Starkhaven, but the script is messy and the words strange to her ears as she attempts to sound them out loud.

When her magic first shows, there are already three other mages vying to take over as First from Ghallia, who wishes to marry and join another clan. Ghallia has been instructing all of them while the Keeper thinks the matter over. It is her, finally, that the Keeper asks to take over for Ghallia. “Why?” she asks. “Hlan knows far more about healing and herbal lore, and Neria knows all of the clan's stories of the Creators by heart.” It was something that still she argued with her parents about, she had taken so long in deciding her vallaslin and who to dedicate herself to, but the new clan stories do not match the ones the Keeper and hahren teach, do not add up to a picture she understands. They worship Ghilan'nain as one of the Creators, and yet every story agrees she was mortal. Who was to say all the Creators had not started that way, raised up by something even older, even stranger? Sometimes she wonders that there were Creators at all, and not just graves misread centuries ago and mistaken for altars.

“Because that question is not asked often enough,” the Keeper answers. “A Keeper's duty is to preserve the old ways and our history, but we forget to question it, to learn from it. We hold ourselves apart from the humans, then wonder that we and they can never meet without fighting breaking out. We must learn from our past to shape a new future, one we can share with the humans, one we _must_ share with the humans, whether we like it or not. And your questions, da'len, will help us.”

Later she thinks it a light leash put on someone the Keeper could see was finding a path that led away from the clan, someone who still had much to give to the clan before being let go with a clear conscience, but at the time it is the greatest thing that has ever happened to her. First! To learn magic from the Keeper, to hear the oldest secret stories a Keeper must preserve and yet refrain from sharing with the clan. (It takes her years to understands why it is kept secret. She disagrees, the truth is the most important thing you can learn, no matter the pain.) It is months before her head comes out of the clouds at the great joy in the Keeper finding her curiosity useful, a tool for the People, instead of an interruption and irritant. She clings to that joy, the knowledge that her burning need to learn everything may help resolve the People's long struggle with the shem. Even at the end of it all, heart breaking with new knowledge of old lore, everything she has been taught lying shattered on the ground, even as she tells herself she always suspected, she holds tightly to it. The People must learn from the past, to forge a new future.

Sitting atop the highest tower of Skyhold, looking over the bailey and beyond to the great mountains that surround the fortress, she understands Hahren Atallas' words about the clan merely being a waypoint. Most think of their clan as home and look no further, but her clan has always favored listening to one's heart, to what it thinks home should feel like. It is a clan of questers merely stopping for a year or five on their way to what makes their heart beat. It is a clan of storytellers stopping to swap tales beside the fire before moving on to the next city, the next clan, to share with _their_ storytellers and learn theirs. It is its own little Arlathvhen, collecting the wisdom of other clans to pass along further to others. And here, in Skyhold, she has found a new clan after the long stay at the waypoint of Lavellan, one that matches the beat of her heart. Or perhaps the pulse of the mark on her hand.

Whichever it is, it feels like home.

She'll have to leave, of course. The People deserve the truths about the Creators that Mythal's temple showed her, the secrets hidden in the tall memorial trees of the Emerald Graves, the mysteries revealed about the decline of the Dales, even before the March. If the People are ever to move forward, they must know their faults as well as their triumphs. Lying about the past has only brought them to the edge of ruin.

"Duty, distraction, da'len," Cole murmurs, appearing beside her. "You'll hurt yourself in the end."

"I was always going to," she replies.

**Author's Note:**

> From [character meme on tumblr](http://elfhawk3.tumblr.com/post/104973970812/questions-about-your-character)\- "What is one thing about them that they are most proud of?" Feel free to send an ask, about anyone you might be interested in.


End file.
